Errata: January 2026

by Craig Willms

Whoa, what a year it's been.

I honestly don't know what to make of what's going on. I freely admit that I have been poisoned by leftism and its predetermined righteousness that when common sense hit's me upside the head I automatically think something is wrong. The entrenchment of leftism in every single aspect of our beings has made me unwittingly compliant. Living in the surreal landscape of the Minneapolis clown show I feel like I've been slapped awake a half a dozen times. I guess this means I'm now "based" if being "based" means being confident, authentic, and unapologetically true to oneself, regardless of societal expectations or popular opinion. Leftism is all about compliance and fealty to the collective belief regardless of the facts. We can talk about the dearth of truth in the zeitgeist of the quasi-capitalist cronyism that actually does rule the world, but leftism pervades that as well. 

1.) First, being Minnesotan since birth I see what leftism and the corruption that comes with it has done to the mentality of my state. That's why I was so, so happy that the worst governor in our history, maybe in the history of the United States has decided not to seek re-election (BTW he would have won). Now we just need him to resign and run off with his tail between his legs all the way to China. Today he is essentially a yapping chihuahua, nothing he has to say is relevant in the least. That anyone would support him in the wake of the scandal and fraud that has dragged our state into the national doghouse and made Minnesota a laughing stock is beyond me.

2.) The spectacle of a Trump sanctioned operation taking out Nick Maduro and his wife from inside a military compound in Venezuela was a demonstration beyond belief. But they got it done, a seemingly impossible task, with minimal damage and loss of life. Amazing. I strongly suspect the U.S. had inside help. I've since read articles and saw a documentary on what had happened to the once proud and quite rich Venezuelan nation to now realize it had ceased to be a functioning state. Venezuela was being propped up by foreign nations that had no intention of helping a beaten down Venezuelan population that is slowly starving to death. To know that average Venezuelans all over the world and those still in country are deliriously happy is all I need to know. Trump is in the process of saving them. Trump for his part, unfortunately, is once again talking and doing himself no favors - he needs to shut up. That said, I have hope that Venezuela will make a big comeback. Time will tell.

3.) An ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, once again putting Minnesota in national spotlight for all the wrong reasons. I saw the video and what I saw was a car ramming an ICE agent and that car being shot at by the agent. The woman, an anti-ICE activist, was confronting ICE in the course of doing their duty as a law enforcement agency. As the Brits would say she was engaging in a perversion of the course of justice. She used her car to block ICE vehicles from passage. When agents got out to confront her directly she used her car to thwart them, backing towards one agent then pulling forward to ram another. It was totally unfortunate, a sad loss of a life, but also totally avoidable. To say she asked for it sounds cruel, but that's exactly what she did. My message to all: If you see ICE - go the other way.

That's all, for now... More later, the year is still young.

It's a Plastic World

 

by Craig Willms

"I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics. There's a great future in plastics."

                                                                                                    ~ The Graduate

In the film The Graduate, the character Mr. McGuire, played by Walter Brooke, advises Dustin Hoffman's character, Benjamin Braddock to invest in plastics. The claim was that plastic would change everything. And... It did.

So here we are nearly sixty years later, and we have a problem with plastic. Do we? Really? The answer is yes, but not in the way you might think.

When the plastics industry (read: oil industry) started getting grief about the environmental problem plastic was causing they tried righteously to get in front of it by pushing for recycling. The industry co-opted the symbol we all now associate with recycling - the triangular shaped looping arrow symbol. The symbol was not trademarked so they were able to put in on all plastic products. They categorized their products by type and assigned a number to each type. Today consumers see the symbol with a number on it and assume it means it's recyclable. In truth only two of the seven or eight types of plastics consumers come into contact with are actually recyclable. So, we dutifully recycle, looking for the symbol regardless of the number on it and toss it in the recycle bin. We have done this for 30+ years now. It's so ingrained that when my daughter was a child, she asked me ruefully, "Daddy, do we save the world?" I immediately said, "yes, honey, we recycle".

So we happily go about life thinking we're doing our part to save the world, feeling oh so good about ourselves. It's all a lie. Very, very little of the plastic we so carefully collect and sort actually gets recycled. Most of it is either dumped in a landfill, burned or put on garbage barges to be shipped to a third world country where it piles up or gets dumped in the ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch anyone? The industry and the government have known this for years, for decades, but no one says a thing.

The truth is recycling plastic has caused far worse environmental damage than just treating as trash and burying it in a landfill. Additionally, we get to pay for it.

If it's well known in the industry and the bureaucracy that recycling plastics is a fool's errand, then why are we still doing it? Bureaucracy, say no more. One civic administrator responded to this question honestly and unironically by saying "the consumer demands it". What? Did I hear that right? Indeed, the consumer is conditioned like a well-trained like a sea lion at the zoo. People would bark and clap their flippers if their cities suddenly dropped plastic recycling. Yes, even if it saved them money.

It's beyond me the sheer stupidity of that true statement. It was the government and the industry with the help of the media that trained the human animal to always recycle plastic. When are we going to face reality and stop this environmentally damaging practice? 

Plastic is a miracle product, it has enhanced our lives, made things safer and lighter, easier to transport and so much more. Like most things it's not a win/win proposition, it comes with trade-offs. Plastic waste is one of those trade-offs. Additionally the issue of micro-plastics in the environment and in our bodies may ultimately be the worst of it. Studies of micro-plastics point to the recycling process being the ultimate culprit, making these microscopic particle airborne and easily inhalable. It's a real problem. The ultimate solution would be to make consumer products out of bio-degradable plastics. I haven't a clue the science or economics of something like that, if it were simple, it probably would have been done by now. Until that's a reality we need to be smart about this issue. Currently the best solution is to bury it in a landfill. Burning it, shredding it or shipping it to ill-equipped third world countries is illogical and environmentally damaging.

Countless hands are in the till on this one. There are reverse incentives to do the right thing, the almighty dollar front and center. In the name of the consumer, they keep up the charade of plastic recycling, while the Earth is trashed and polluted. One wonders how many other fairy tales we've been told. 

 You might be saying wait a minute, we're supposed to throw plastic in the trash? The landfills will be full! No, not even close. Landfills have a tiny footprint compared to other human activities. Liken all the land mass on Earth to a football field. By the year 3000 we will have a landfill that stretches all the way to the one-foot line. It's just not a real problem. The problem is in our heads; we've been brainwashed into recycling plastic. It's illogical and damaging to the environment - that's the fact. 

Our Curious Winter

Just a note on the winter season up here in Minnesota. While we are not necessarily breaking records for warm temperatures and low snowfall totals I have to say this is one of the most unusual winters I can remember. We've had just under 15 in. of snow - that's 15 one inch snowfalls.

The city's snowplows have been idle. Tens of thousands of dollars are being saved all over the upper midwest by cash strapped municipalities. Heating bills are down. Weather related traffic jams non-existed. I personally have not re-filled the blue juice in my car yet. I haven't had to re-fill the bird feeders even once. Almost no one is weather depressed or even complaining - this is a birthright up in these parts. There are probably countless ways to quantify this most unusual blessing. Honestly it's really hard to find a downside.

Sure the guys that supplement their income with the overtime by plowing the roads or the pickup owners who plow alleys and parking lots are bummed, but the rest of us are just not crying for them. They maybe should've saved a little from last year when we had 90+ in. of snow and a winter that would not quit. In fact last winter lasted until early June when we woke up one morning and it was summer.

It's really interesting too that we are not seeing "Global Warming" stories in the local media. Has it finally set in that so-called man-caused climate change is the hoax some of us believe, or is it just that it doesn't make a good story anymore. Possibly a - we're bored with that - attitude in the news room. Most of us joke, "if this is global warming I'm all for it!" Only most of us aren't really joking.

Just so you people out there who are in favor of this winter know, y'all have me to thank for it. Yeah, that's right - you can thank me. You see I went out in early December and bought a brand new big 'ol snow blower. It's February 4th I have yet to fire it up. I'm OK with that. But next year you guys need to step up...



CW